manufacture of software and hardware. Furthermore, to showcase the innovations coming out of R&D, a national annual innovations’ week will be observed with documentaries of the innovations presented with high publicity. ‘Strategy S5: Promote Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to safeguard innovations.’ Strategy S4: Promote commercialization of government ICT services. This will be achieved through the following actions: • Re-organize ICT service delivery into efficient and effective methodologies borrowed from the private sector. • Formation of government infrastructure management SPV in partnership with private sector. • Develop government ICT resources such as the data centre, wide area network (WAN), and ICT units in ministries into commercially-viable, managed services which are “sold” to Government departments. • Incorporate companies to run the most effective government ICT businesses. • Make the most successful companies independent and sell them to the public. It is anticipated that Managed Units to deliver ICT in 18 ministries will be developed. Strategy S5: Promote Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to safeguard innovations. Respect for and protection of intellectual property rights is of utmost importance for any process involved with innovations. Any organization or individual that invests in R&D do so on the basis that their innovation will have the opportunity to earn a return on investment. Without a return on innovation, the ability to continually innovate diminishes. This ability requires that IPRs be both respected and protected, a key factor in establishing a culture of innovation and achieving scale. The Kenyan IP law is presently weak and ineffective. There is a need for reviewing the IP law to allow for creating capacity and ensuring enforcement. b) I T Enabled services (I TES) Objective O11: Grow the number of ITES companies and the range of services provided ..92 .................................................................................................................Towards ...............a...Digital .............Kenya ............ Strategy S1: Promote outsourcing of government ICT operations. Candidate services for outsourcing include contact center services, records management, digitization, data storage, etc. This will be achieved through the following actions: • Promoting policies and incentives to transform government ICT operations within Ministries and Counties from procurement of products and people to procurement of services from the private sector. • Developing local Government contractors with the right competence and clearance level to provide secure ICT services for the Government of Kenya. It is anticipated that there will be delivery of managed units with private sector participation to 18 Government ministries. ‘Strategy S2: Encourage local firms to outsource’ Strategy S2: Encourage local firms to outsource. This may include the provision tax or other incentives to promote the use of Kenyan IT outsourcing companies (excludes multinational companies with offices in Kenya). It may also include creating awareness and providing education and training to potential outsourcing customers on risk mitigation (contracts, SLAs, ownership, etc.). Strategy S3: Develop the ITES industry to go international. Kenya is widely perceived to be a thriving technology cluster. The power of this brand should not be underestimated, and many in Kenya’s BPO/ITES have used it to their advantage (Graham and Waema, 2014). One of the ways of developing the industry to go international is through the Government incorporating leading private sector ITES companies in all international delegations as well as providing business negotiation assistance. Strategy S4: Integrate ITES into all national policies and development of industry ITES standards to create depth in understanding of ITES to ensure growth of the industry. Government will work with the relevant industry association(s) to set standards and ethics and to establish policy to set up governance of local association to drive standards and ethics in the ITES sector. c) Developm ent of the I CT Sector 93 Towards a Digital Kenya ..............................................................................................................................................................